Kansas City, MO (12/05/2006) Bill Amend’s popular FoxTrot comic strip will go to a Sunday-only publication schedule as of Dec. 31, 2006, announced Universal Press Syndicate today. The last daily will be Saturday, Dec. 30. Reruns of dailies will be available for Web usage.

“After spending close to half of my life writing and drawing FoxTrot cartoons, I think it’s time I got out of the house and tried some new things,” said Amend. “I love cartooning and I absolutely want to continue doing the strip, just not at the current all-consuming pace. I’ve been blessed over the years with a terrific syndicate, patient newspaper clients, and more support from readers than I probably deserve, and I want to assure them all that while I’ll be now a less-frequent participant on the comics pages, I’ll continue to treat my visits as the special privilege they are.”

Amend, who started the strip in April, 1988, and who has more than 1,000 client newspapers, is taking time to pursue other creative outlets. “In addition to Sunday newspapers, we may see FoxTrot entertaining us in other kinds of media platforms,” says Lee Salem, president and editor of Universal Press Syndicate.

Amend has more than 30 published FoxTrot comic collections and has licensed his characters for calendars and wallpapers for cell phones. He was nominated in 2006 as a finalist for cartoonist of the year by the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award.

April Patterson will never make her mother, Elly, nervous by driving a motorcycle like her big sister, Elizabeth, or joyous by marrying and having children like her brother, Michael. She will never again own pets like Farley, who gave his life to save her from drowning, or his fuzzy faced successor Edgar.

These things will not happen because in the fall of 2007, after 28 years, April, Elly, John, Michael, Elizabeth and the rest of the beloved Patterson family will give their creator, Lynn Johnston, a much deserved rest.

And while they may be back, the "For Better or For Worse" clan won't get any older. Speaking from her office in Corbeil, Ont., Johnston said she considered finding someone to carry on the comic strip -- based on her own family, it appears daily in The Grand Rapids Press and 2,000 other papers in 22 countries -- but knew the scenario would never work; she would want to be involved.

"In my heart, I know I'd be over their shoulder all the time like, as my father used to say, 'a bad smell,' " she said, laughing. "I also thought about having someone take over the strip from Michael's (the oldest son) point of view. But, ultimately, I decided I would like to stop.

"My parents died young. I would like to jump out of an airplane again and bungee jump and see the Eiffel Tower ... from the top." Fans will be delighted to know that the strip will not end. Rather, it will continue as a still-being discussed hybrid of some earlier, little seen work along with some new material."

But, with the exception of a possible book to catch readers up on what happens to the Pattersons, the characters will not age beyond the day Johnston sets aside her India ink.

"I just can't see them growing older," she says.

The decision to leave the characters as they are will mean the youngest Patterson, April, will forever be frozen as a young woman on the cusp of becoming an adult. Created in 1991 to satisfy a desire Johnston had to have a third child, millions have watched April grow into her teens chronicled in the recent collection of strips "She's Turning Into One of Them" (Andrews McMeel, 136 pages, $10.95).

The book follows April as she deals with many of the same issues as her real life counterparts; snobby girls, sibling squabbles and playing in a band.

"She has made that transition from little girl to young adult," Johnston said. "When the strip concludes, she'll be getting ready to go to university, she'll be excited and scared. She'll still be hanging out with the band. She would definitely, eventually, be a veterinarian, because it's one of the things that always interested me and all of the characters are me."

Johnston says she knows many readers already mourn the loss of April as a child, with her bib overalls, pageboy haircut and Farley by her side. But she hopes they take heart in the fact that April will forever remain a delightful and happy young person.

As for herself, Johnston, who will be 60 next May, said she's ready to take a break from the lovable Pattersons.

"I feel I've done the best I can do for as long as I can do it," she said. "It's time."

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"The good news is that all that blood is actually ketchup. The bad news, however, is that all that ketchup is actually blood."

Sad to see both go, but at least the authors did it on their accord. Foxtrot is my favorite current comic and after Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, probably my third favorite of all time. I've always enjoyed FBOFW also, mainly due to the real time aspect. I remember April being born and Michael going off to school and later getting married and then having kids (for the most part, parallelling my life). Both comics will be missed.

Now when's crap like the Family Circus and Garfield going to fold up shop. Way over due, they haven't been funny in years.

I read that about FoxTrot the other day, and I'll be sad to see it go. FoxTrot and Calvin and Hobbes have always been my favorites, and I look forward to reading the new FT every day. It sounds like it will continue on Sundays, which is nice that there will still be a little something new on the way.